PM Modi invites US businesses to invest in India, cites burgeoning educational infra

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing business leaders in America at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC pitched for companies in the US to invest in India after elaborating on the scale and pace of the development underway on establishing the educational infrastructure in the country.

He also invited businesses in the USA to make the most of the opportunities in India as the groundwork has been prepared by the strengthening of the India - USA bilateral relationship. PM Modi said, “The partnership between India and America will only benefit the people of both countries. In the last 3 days, many historic steps have been taken to strengthen this partnership. India and America are moving forward as the most reliable partners.”

US Tech giants announce investments in India

As a part of the strategic meeting at the White House with some of the marquee tech giants, PM Modi in the presence of US President Joe Biden interacted with Sam Altman of OpenAI, President and CEO of Amazon, Andrew R. Jassy, Executive Chairman, Cisco Systems, John Chambers, Tim Cook from Apple, Sundar Pichai from Google, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Anand Mahindra from Mahindra Group, Mukesh Ambani from Reliance Industries and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath.

During the meeting, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed the e-commerce behemoth's plans to increase its investments in India to a staggering $26 billion. Meanwhile, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced a $10 billion investment commitment to India's digitization fund.

‘India growing at the rate of more than 7 per cent’: PM Modi

Despite the challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, India has grown at a tremendous pace, “The way India has fought with Corona, shows the potential of India. Today, in the post-pandemic world, you know the situation of the economy, inflation and supply chain but India is growing at the rate of more than 7%. Currently, an era of reforms is underway in India,” the Prime Minister said.
 
Further adding more details on the ramping up of the educational institutions of the country, PM Modi informed,

• “Every week, one new university is built in India"
• "Every third day, one Atal Tinkering lab is getting opened"
• "Every second day, one new college is getting constructed"
• "Every day, one new ITI is getting formed"
• One new IIT, IIM opened every year.”

According to government data, a total of 1,113 Universities or University institutions have been registered, which includes 43,796 Colleges and 11,296 standalone Institutions. 43 per cent of universities and 61.4 per cent of colleges are located in rural areas. 

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is establishing Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs) in schools across India to foster curiosity, creativity, and imagination in young minds; and inculcate skills such as design thinking mindset, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing etc. As of date, AIM has funded 10,000 schools to establish Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs).